Transcript of Guy Kawasaki: Win Every Pitch Using These Timeless Sales Principles | Sales | YAPClassic

Hello, young and profiters. We're kicking off the first YAP Classic of the New Year, so welcome to 2026. There's no better way to start off a year of growth, opportunity, and leveling up than by exploring the fundamentals of what truly drives a remarkable career. We're rewinding to my conversation with Guy Kawasaki, legendary marketer, former chief evangelist at Apple, and current chief evangelist at Canva. Guy's career is full of bold pivots, unexpected opportunities, and practical lessons drawn from decades in Silicon Valley. In this interview, he breaks down what true evangelism means, why sales is the most important skill in business, and how to pitch and demo like a pro. Guy also shares candid stories about working with Steve Jobs, the role luck played in his biggest breaks, and how stacking skills from every job can translate transform your future. By the end of this conversation, you'll have a clearer picture of how exceptional careers are truly built. So let's dive right into my chat with Guy Kawasaki.

Hey, Guy. Welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

Thank you for having me.

It is such an honor to have you on the show. It seems like I hear your name all the time. You are also rocking the podcasting space. You're a host of the Remarkable People podcast. You're also a very in demand keynote speaker, the author of 15 Books. And as for your day job, you are currently the Chief Evangelist of Canva, which I love that software. And previously, you're also the chief evangelist at Apple, and you're well known for helping Apple become a household name. In fact, you are known to have popularized secular evangelism during your time at Apple. And so I feel like Apple is a great place to start this conversation when it comes to your journey.

Far away.

Yeah. It was a long time ago, but it's super relevant still. And I think lots of great lessons. And from my understanding, you had no technical background before you worked at Apple. You had a degree in psychology. You were a law school dropout, and your former college roommate actually got you the job. And this was pre-Apple that we know today. So 1983, the year before Macintosh came out and changed the world, and you were getting your MBA, you worked at a jewelry factory, and you said what you learned at the jewelry factory actually translated to your new job at Apple. So I thought that was really interesting. I always talk about skill stacking. So take us back to your 20-year-old Kawasaki days right before you landed your job at Apple. What were you like? How did you get your foot in the door? And how did your experience in sales translate to your job at Apple?

So I worked for a jewelry manufacturer in downtown Los Angeles. And this manufacturer sold to retailers, Tiffany, Tivel, Bayly Banks & Biddle, those kinds of high-end jewelry store. And the jewelry business is hand-to-hand combat, manufacturer and retailer in terms of selling. So it's not at all like today's idea of selling where, let's test the blue line versus the red line to see if it increases click-through, or let's see if this background influences Click through. Nothing like that. This was open up a suitcase of samples and pray for an order. That's what it was like. And from that experience, I truly learned how to sell. And that selling skill, because it was necessary, you You either sold or you died. So that translated into evangelism and has helped me the rest of my career. Now, you have many entrepreneurs listening to this. And let me just cut to the chase here. As an entrepreneur, there are only two important functions, making it and selling it. And so if you're the engineer, you've got to make it. And if you're the salesperson, marketing person, evangelist, social media person, it's all about selling. And so the greatest example ever of this is was and jobs.

So jobs couldn't design the motherboard and couldn't design the computer, and Waz couldn't sell. So it worked out perfectly. Waz could design and jobs could sell. And that's the genesis of Apple. So if you're an entrepreneur and you're listening to this, you just need to understand that you fundamentally need two people, one to sell and one to make, and the rest is extra.

I love that. I always say that sales skills is such an important job. And for me, I remember, I worked like 10 or 12 different jobs in retail, working at every store in the mall. And back then, I was making minimum wage. But that's translated into millions 10 years later as I'm using the same skills as an entrepreneur, because my main job, to your point, is selling, whether I'm landing sponsorships or selling social media to my clients. You've got to sell as an entrepreneur. So I'd love to hear about what were some of the key What are the lessons you learned in terms of building trust and making sales at your time, either at Apple or at the jewelry factory? What are your biggest sales tips?

Well, one of the things that I learned at Apple and in the jewelry business is that fundamentally, well, I call it guy's golden touch. So guy's golden touch is not whatever I touch turns to gold. I wish that was true. A guy's golden touch is whatever his gold guy touches. And by that, I mean, the key to sales and evangelism is that you're selling and evangelize something good because it's easy to evangelize and sell something good. It's hard to evangelize and sell shit. So guess what? Don't affiliate with shit. Duh. Now, that is a duh-ism, but you'd be amazed at how many people don't understand that. So I would say, 80% of sales. Have a great product.

Yeah.

And so when you got on Apple, what was your actual job title?

My actual job title was Software Evangelist. So my job was to convince companies to write software for Macintosh. And now you have to understand that evangelism comes from a Greek word meaning bringing the good news. So I was in the position of bringing the good news to developers that Macintosh was a new platform, new reach to a different customer. It prevented you from having overdependence on IBM software, IBM market. And finally, for the engineer, it offered the richness and development environment that you could write the software that you always wanted to write. And so this was good news for a company. It was new customers in new markets with cool potential for graphics. That was the good news of Macintosh. In the developer sense, in the consumer sense, the good news of Apple was democratizing personal computing. That people who could not have used the computer because of the user interface challenges before could now use a Macintosh. And today, I'm chief evangelist of Canva, and it's the same thing. Canva has democratized design. So now you don't have to be an expert in Photoshop or have a graphic designer in your company or in your group or be a graphic designer.

Now you can create your own beautiful graphics.

Yeah. So I read your book called Wise Guy, and you had a lot of lessons in there that I really liked. And one of them was just getting the door, right? And you rose up the ranks in Apple. I think you ended up directly working with Steve Jobs. And obviously, you didn't start out that way. And so I'd love to hear your advice because I have so many young professionals trying to get their big break. They're looking for their dream job, and they don't realize that it starts with maybe the internship, and you work your ass off until you get your dream job?

I think very few people initially get their dream job. Frankly, I'd make the case that when you're fresh out of college or in that bracket, you don't know what your dream job is. You don't have enough data to judge. So So particularly for this generation, your generation, over the course of your career, you'll probably have 10 or 15 jobs. So you shouldn't exactly sweat that you don't like the first two or three because there's 12 more to come. And it It's different in my age bracket and older. If you went to work for IBM in the '70s or the '80s, you expected to retire or die at IBM or HP. And that's just not true for your generation. So I am proof of, well, for one thing, there's several pieces of wisdom. So piece of wisdom number one is it does not matter how you get in. So I got in because of nepotism. I got in because of my college roommate. Other than that, I had very few qualifications. Arguably, I may not have any qualification. So I got in because of nepotism. But now, the important thing to know about nepotism or however you got in is that it's not how you get in.

It's what you do once you get in. Because the day after I started at Apple, nobody gave a shit that I work for this guy or that I went to college with this guy. At that point, it was you either are productive and useful and valuable or you're not. It doesn't matter. And now that can work both ways. So if you have no background like me and you get in and you prove you're valuable, nobody cares that you didn't have a background. The flip side is also true. So you could have the most amazing pedigree, Harvard MBA, Yale undergraduate, summer internship at Goldman Sachs. You work for McKinsey for a year. So you got this perfect, perfect background. But then you start at a company and you are useless. Well, guess what? Nobody cares that you work for McKinsey or Goldman you went to Sacks or you went to Harvard or Yale. You are just useless. And so that's a very important lesson. It doesn't matter how you got in. It matters what you do once you got in.

I love that advice. And while we're on advice for the younger bracket of my audience. I heard you once say, and I wasn't planning on bringing this up, but I feel like it's very relevant. You were saying that people should stay in college as long as they can. You said it was pretty funny. You were like, Try to stay five years, not four years if you can. I'd love for you to touch on that a little.

So of course, this does not apply to my children, but I think that college is one of the last times in your life where you are truly free. Your biggest problem is your chemical your industry midterm or your English paper that's due. And so this is the last time that those things are seeming big challenges and crises. For the rest of your life, you're going to be worried about making money, paying off student loans, Finding a lifelong partner. God help you when you have kids, then you completely lose control of your life. And so you should enjoy college as long as you can. And with hindsight, I graduated in three and a half years because I'm an Asian-American, so I was overly driven to graduate fast, and I didn't take advantage of things. So I could have gone to an overseas campus. The school that I went to had overseas in London and Brazil and Japan and you name it. They had an overseas campus. But no, I was the dumb ass who wanted to graduate as fast as possible. I wish I had gone to an overseas campus.

Well, the biggest regrets when people are dying are the things that they didn't do, but you turned out okay, guys. I think it's okay.

I've I've overcome that.

So let's turn it on the flip side. You've worked at Apple, you've worked at Canva. What are some of the biggest lessons that you've learned along the way when it comes to managing a team, employer recruitment, employer retention?

I think Maybe the most important lesson that I've learned in this regard is that you should hire people who are better than you at what they do. If you look around the room, let's say you're in a management position, or let's say you're the CEO and the founder, you should look around the the room and say, You know what? That woman is better at marketing than I am. That other woman is better at finance than I am. That man is better than I am at engineering. And so everybody in that room should be better than you at what you do. So the biggest lesson that I learned in employee recruitment and retention and optimization, really, is to hire better than yourself. That it should be a source of pride that when you look around the room, the people you've hired are better at the function than you could ever be. As we said in the Macintosh division, A players hire A players, B players hire C players, C players hire D players. I've subsequently modified that so that A players hire A plus players. And this takes some self-confidence. If you look around the room and everybody in the room does their job better than you could ever, then you're the CEO, you might think, Oh, my God, I'm supposed to be the big dog, and I'm not.

Well, I think the ultimate Confirmation of you being the big dog is you're big enough to hire people who are better than you.

I love that advice. And it's so true. You do need confidence for that. Some people are too cocky to do that, but that's not how you get ahead. So speaking of bosses, I heard you on another show. I do a lot of research for this show. And you talked about the hardest bosses and teachers being the best bosses. You mentioned Steve Jobs being your hardest boss, which I just think it's so cool you got to work with him. And then also your English teacher and high school was your hardest boss, but you didn't say what they taught you. So I want to know what they taught you.

Well, my English teacher taught me about grammar and writing, no question. And grammar seems to be less and less important these days. But in those days, he just drilled it into us. So I learned about writing, the rigors of writing. From Steve Jobs, oh, my God, I learned so much. I mean, I learned that you can't ask your current customers how to innovate because all they want is better, faster, cheaper. I learned that A players hire A players or even better, A plus players. I learned that if people believe in what you believe in, they will go through all sorts of lengths to help you. That's evangelism. And I also learned some stuff from Steve Jobs in a sense of what not to do because he was extremely demanding, even scary to work for. It's not clear to me that that's necessary to succeed.

Interesting. I I love that. And so, like I said, I've been listening to a lot of interviews. So Jordan Harbinger is actually my mentor and one of my closest friends. And you guys were having a conversation about luck, and you guys got down this rabbit hole about how Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, they had a lot of luck with their journey. And you were arguing that they're smart, but they're not that much different than everybody else. And so I couldn't tell if this was motivating or depressing, because on one side, It's a good thing that we all could potentially achieve that greatness.

I don't know if I exactly said that Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk are not any smarter than any of us. The person I know best is Steve Jobs, and he's on a different plane of intelligence. Okay, let's concede that. Having said that, if you gave me a choice of, here's a lucky CEO and Here's a smart one, I probably would pick the lucky one based on what I know today. And Now, when you have a Steve Jobs who is both lucky and smart and could actually influence both sides. So if you're smart, you may influence your luck because you'll be in the right place at the right time. And if you're lucky, then you'll seem smart. It's not exactly a either or. You can be both. And arguably, those people are both. My point was that it's not just about you. There are plenty of smart people in the world, and some of them have just been unlucky. Some of them have picked the wrong thing. Some have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, et cetera, et cetera. So if you start believing that you are God's given gift to entrepreneurship, then you're going down a bad path.

You should be humble enough to understand that it takes a lot of things to be successful, one of which is luck.

Yes. And I'm sorry if I misconstrued your words. That's okay. So it wasn't my intention. It wasn't my intention. I wanted you to tell us that. And I want to understand, do you feel like there's any way to maximize our chances to get lucky?

Well, part of it is just showing up. So you have to show up. I mean, luck, there's a saying, a Chinese saying that you have to stand by the side of the river a long time before the roke's duck will fly into your mouth. Which is to say you can't just depend on luck. You have to go make the luck happen and you have to be in the game. So if you're an entrepreneur, well, if you truly believe in luck too much, you may believe that you don't even have to be an entrepreneur, that someday, I don't know what, fortune will smile upon you and you're presenting with the next apple, that's not going to happen. You have to go start the apple. You have to go fail a few times. And that's just the way it works. If it was easy to be an entrepreneur, believe me, more people would be one.

Yeah, I totally agree. So So let's talk about quitting. So another life lesson that you often talk about is quitting. You quit law school, I think, just a couple of weeks in. And I agree, the times that I've quit something in my life were some of the best decisions in my life because it opened up the opportunity to do something different. And sometimes you've got to let go of good to get something great. And it actually reminded me of something. I interviewed this guy, Colin O'Brady, yesterday. He's this endurance athlete. He's crossed over Antarctica unassisted. He's So I went through Drake's Passage, which has claimed the lives of 20,000 sailors. And he told me something that really imprinted on me. And it was that life is a scale of one to 10. So 10s are the biggest milestones in your life, crushing it with some accomplishment, having a baby, one is going bankrupt, getting divorced, all those bad things. And people tend to stay at five. You know what I mean? They're comfortable. Every day is just five, five, five, because they're worried about hitting a one or a two. And they never get a nine or a 10 because they're just staying at five.

And so I feel like that is very relevant to taking a chance to doing something like quitting because people are just so afraid of failing. So I'd love to hear your perspective on quitting and why it's not failing and just your thoughts on that.

So several thoughts, some of which may conflict. First of all, quitting takes courage. I don't know about you, but for me, it took a lot of courage to quit because I was in such this Asian-American path of going to this prestigious school, then going to law school. And it was all planned out, being doctor, lawyer, or dentists, right? So getting off that track and basically wasting the efforts of 2,000 years of my family took some courage. Now, I interviewed Angela Duckworth, and she had a very interesting take on quitting, which is she says you can quit, but you should quit when it's a good day. Let's say, we'll take take an example. Let's say that you are taking the violin and you're not allowed to quit because you are not progressing on violin. You can quit if you're doing well with violin and you just decide that you don't like it. That's okay. But quitting before you even get to that point is not okay. It's a very interesting perspective on quitting. It's easy for her to say and me to say, not necessarily to do. But anyway, so that's an interesting thing about quitting.

You have to quit in the right way for the right reason at the right time.

That is interesting.

I also think that, well, let's see, I quit that law school. I have no regret about that. I think the concept of a slippery slope is vastly overrated. So you could make the case, Oh, God, you quit law school, so now you're a quitter. You're not going to be successful for the rest of your life. You're just going to be a bum because you quit law school. Well, that didn't exactly work out that way. And I think if you look at many things, the referral to the slippery slope is vastly, vastly overblown. If you require background checks to buy an AR-15, next thing you know, you're going to be taking away my guns. That's a slippery slope fear, right? But it ain't true. So you need to beware of being too afraid of the slippery slope. Now, if you quit three or four things in a row, you probably should be worried about the... You are going down that slope. But quitting one thing, I don't think so.

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I think in your case, you quit, but it's not like you decided you weren't going to work or keep on hustling and trying to make it. You found something that you enjoyed more. So I totally We agree there.

I would say my observation is most people stay too long rather than quit too early. But I got to give you a huge caveat with that. But I also have come to believe that the concept that the grass is always greener is not true. And that sometimes you should fertilize and water the grass you're standing on, not try to find greener grass.

Are you alluding to you leaving Apple by any chance?

Exactly.

Talk to us about that.

Well, I left Apple twice, actually. Once because I wanted to start a company, but actually both times because I wanted to start a company. But let's be honest, when you leave a company to start another company, you could talk about all the romance of entrepreneurship and you wanted to dent the universe and blah, blah, blah, blah. But it fundamentally, at some level, it means that you are not happy or you don't believe in where you are. I mean, there's got to be some piece of your decision that is tied to that. It cannot purely be all this amazing upside. And so, listen, if you had told me when I quit in '87 and '97 that Apple would become a $2 trillion company, I would have told you, you are on hard drugs, like hard illegal drugs. There is no way. The first time I quit Apple, it's not clear that Apple would have survived. So who knows? Who knows? So sometimes you should just Let's stick with it. Now, this might not play well with your generation, who I just said is going to have 12 to 50 jobs over their career. But that leaves my experience.

I know people who had a great one or two years at Salesforce and left because At that point, Salesforce was already large, publicly traded. They weren't handing out big options anymore. It was hard to see how they're going to make millions and millions of dollars and rise into this large organization. Well, it's too early to really assess that decision because I left Apple in '97, and it didn't become a trillion-dollar company to, I don't know, 2017 or whatever it was, right? So it took 20 years. Now, you might say, well, who wants to work for the same company for 20 years? But that's dependent on what you're doing and how you're growing, not necessarily just going to the same parking space for 20 years. So this interview is filled with inherent conflicts that I I just want people to realize who's listening that, yes, I am conflicting myself. I know I'm conflicting myself, but you have to understand that that is how life goes.

Yeah, it's not black and white.

It's not black and white. I am just one data point. With entrepreneurs, in particular, I'll give you a classic entrepreneurial thing that one theory says you take your shot and then you pivot quickly. Another says, no matter what the negativity and ney-saying is about your product, if you believe you stick through it, you stick with it, and you pop out the other side. Those are two completely different things, right? Pivot or grid it out. Both have worked. So it depends on, well, what's the last podcast I listen to?

Exactly. Who is the last person I talked to about this?

Exactly.

I love it. But you know what? There's many paths to success. Like you said, people succeed one way or another. And you've succeeded even though you've made decisions that maybe you regret. But at the end of the day, maybe that wasn't your path. Let's talk about some of these decisions because you quit Apple twice. Then Steve Jobs, I think, asked you back a third time. You said no. You almost got to be the CEO of Yahoo.

Well, that's an overstatement. I was asked to interview. Let's take the worst case. Let's say I got asked to interview and I was offered the job. So I could have been, yes.

You could have been the CEO of Yahoo. And I guess that was before Yahoo was Yahoo, right?

Well, yeah. So right there, that's two billion.

Those are billion dollar decisions.

Yes.

Have you learned anything about decision making? Where do you feel like you've gotten better at it? Or do you just feel like, again, it's this luck, idea of luck?

Well, who among us doesn't think they're getting better at decision-making? But let's just say we're not all right. So I don't know. Listen, I turned down this opportunity with Yahoo. I quit Apple twice. I turned Steve Jobs down for another offer. So there's four right there, right? So that would be roughly, I'd say, two and a half billion dollars total. And two and a half billion here, two and a half billion there, it adds up to real money after a while. So on the other hand, A lot of it is positioning and branding often in your own mind. So in my mind, the way I explain myself is, okay, so I worked at Apple and Canva. Who's going to say you're a failure? I mean, Apple and Canva, that's two very good acts, right?

I mean, I think you are far from a failure. You are very successful. And Canva is becoming this huge company. I mean, you really found a unicorn. You do know how to pick them.

Well, okay, let's discuss that.

Okay.

Okay. Because it's very important that I think entrepreneurs truly understand what goes on. So I started with Apple because of nepotism, right? Okay. Then I I left Apple, I started a company. I went back, I started another company. Those two companies you would not have heard of because they were moderate, if successful at all. As a venture capitalist, I probably put down, I don't know, 15 bets or something. So if you just looked at the numbers, if you just were a numerical geek, you'd say, Okay, guys, so you have Apple and Canva, and you have 15 failures. So guy is two for 17. So that's one way of looking I look at it. The way I look at it is I may be two for 17, but look at the two. Look at the two.

Everybody knows that you are. You're hosting a popular podcast. You're being way too modest. You've written 15 books. Come on.

No, no, no. Well, but listen, I'm not a trillionaire. I'm not a billionaire. I'm a surfer. I just like to surf and podcast. That's what I do. I surf and podcast. I have decided that my podcast, I'm on a mission to make people remarkable with my podcast. And it's not because of my wisdom. It's the wisdom of people I interview, such as if you're an entrepreneur. I've interviewed Steve Wozniak. I've interviewed the CEO of Pooperie, which is a great story. Don't laugh at that story, Susie Baties, Fray Farm, The Most Pumpkins, the Hint water. So I have a lot of different kinds of entrepreneurs in my podcast. And I think my podcast is actually, over the course of my lifetime, I've been an I've been an investor, I've been an advisor, whatever, et cetera, et cetera. The best work I've ever done is my podcast without question. It's also least appreciated.

I might be able to help you there. I have to say, my client, Marshall Goldsmith, went on your podcast, and we were planning to put out a podcast, and you were so good at the podcast that he literally came to me in a meeting and he was like, Hala, I don't think I want to do this podcast anymore. And I was like, why? Marshall, you were so excited about it. And he's like, I went on this guy's podcast, Guy Kawasaki, and he was so good and so prepared. And this is just way too much work. I could not be doing this, Hala. And I was like, all right, we'll switch gears, whatever you want, Marshall.

This is a great story. So, of course, I've been on the other side of this discussion. So one day I get an email from Marshall Goldsmith, and I hope people out there understand who Marshall Goldsmith is. He's like the living Peter Drucker, of course. They may not know who Peter Drucker is. But so Marshall Goldsmith is arguably the best executive coach in the world, maybe ever. And so he sends me this email. I said, guy, you changed my life. And I said, is this spam? So he says, Give me a call to schedule a time. So I call him and it's really him. And he says, You know, guy, he tells me this story that he was on my podcast and he listened to it. It was so well done and I was so well prepared. He just doesn't want to do it anymore. He told me, God, you changed my life. You made my life better because I was going to try this and it's too much work, and it's too hard, and I don't want to do it anymore. So that is one of the greatest forms of praise I've ever had.

How funny is it that it's all coming full circle, and then I'm the one behind it? That's so funny.

That's true. I lost you a client. I'm sorry.

No, we're doing all his social. That's all good. Okay.

I have a question for you. Sure. Because I've been on the other side of this conversation 175 times. Yes. Okay?

Okay.

Are you just so smart that you have remembered these details to ask me these questions, or do you have notes in front of you?

Oh, well, I have a teleprompter.

Okay. So you're looking at the notes?

I can flip back and forth. Usually, when I say the question, in the very beginning, when I do the intro, I'm reading it because I don't want to butcher it. But then as we're going along, I'll peek at it, I'll read it, and then I'll flash it back down so that I just have my notes. I'm very, very I will prepare it. So I have a little teleprompter and I just flip back and forth.

Well, listen, I've been on many of these interviews and nobody... Seriously, no bullshit. I've never seen an interviewer who makes better eye contact and yet seemingly has all these facts memorized.

Thank you.

Never. So that's why I asked you how you did it, because I was all set for you to tell me, No, guy. I did all my research and it's all up here.

Well, a lot of it is. A lot of the conversation has been all up here. And a lot of the conversation, I'm just flipping through and being like, Oh, yeah, I wanted to ask about that. And I don't have time to read it all, but I just see little bits of it. And part of the confidence is just writing it all out and preparing.

So I hope that you don't edit this part of the conversation out. But I want all you people listening to this podcast that Hala is a fantastic interviewer. And I say that, and I consider myself a fantastic interviewer.

Thank you. That's so sweet. Thank you so much. That's so nice. I won't cut it out because whatever. I prepare it. I always tell everybody, you got to prepare, man. I go on interviews, and you know what they do to me sometimes? I hop on.

How do you pronounce your name? Yeah.

I'm like, Oh, so you haven't listened to one episode. Why am I on here?

I have a theory. We're going down a deep hole right now. We are. I have a theory that I like to start my podcast with a question that sets the interviewer back in the sense like, holy shit, guy really read the entire book. Me too. He's not asking a question from the intro or chapter one. He's asking a question from the middle of the book, or he's asking a question that, God, he watched some YouTube video 10 years ago that I did. This is not just somebody stuck the Wikipedia entry in front of him and said, Okay, go ask Jane Good all these questions.

100 %. I do that, too. I'll make sure that I say something just so that they feel comfortable like, Okay, this is going to be a good interview because she actually knows these little details. I didn't just read your Wikipedia page.

Yeah.

All right. So let's get back to the actionable advice for these young and profiting podcast listeners.

Well, but that's actionable, Ala. I mean, the lesson here is 99. 9% of the people, whether it's podcasting or entrepreneurship or whatever, don't freaking prepare. They think they're just... A very good example of this is pitching your company. So most entrepreneurs believe that they're natural communicators. They're going to rise to the top, they're going to rise to the occasion, and they're going to just pitch from their hearts that it's going to work out right because they're natural. And that's total unequivocal bullshit. And so you need to prepare.

I want to stick on this.

Yeah. So if Steve Jobs... Steve Jobs used to prepare for weeks for a keynote. And if Steve Jobs needs to prepare for weeks, guess what? You are not Steve Jobs, not you. How are you listening? You are not Steve Jobs. So if Steve Jobs needed weeks, you probably need months.

And I have to say, having a good pitch skills, being able to demo your product, this is so key. I have a funny story, too. So when I I was first starting YAP Media. I had my podcast two years into it, grew this brand. People were asking me to be their client. I kept pushing it away. And then finally, I was like, fine, I'll give this a shot. I had volunteers and interns, and I was like, I'll hire them, right? Yeah. I remember I had a billionaire that was interested in my services. His name is Jason Waller, still my client. And I had no website. I had no logo. I wasn't even incorporated. I had no trademark, nothing. All I had was my PowerPoint presentation skills, and I was a good presenter, and I did it for myself already. And so I went in, I gave a pitch, and I closed... My first deal was a $30,000 monthly retainer from a freaking PowerPoint presentation that I just designed really nicely. And so it just goes to show you, if you can pitch and demo, you can make so much out of literally nothing.

Well, especially now, if you use Canva instead of PowerPoint, you would have gotten a 50,000 retainer.

I did use Canva. I've been a user of Canva for... I don't know how they're not sponsoring yet. I've been using Canva for five years.

I work for them. They don't sponsor me.

I literally made my presentation on Canva.

Oh, great. But you The lesson there is... But you prepared, obviously, right? That's number one.

I was preparing my whole life. It's like you preparing with so many different things, presenting at HP, presenting at Disney, presenting in my MBA. It was just like many, many experiences that led up to that moment that changed my life.

Yeah. And so the lesson there is you got to show up and you got to be gritty. As I said before, standing by the side of the river, the roast duck is not going to fly in your mouth.

Yeah. But I want to hear more advice about your pitching skills because I know that you talk about it a lot with evangelism. So what should we do? How should we prepare for a demo? What do we need to know?

Okay. So first of all, I think the key to a pitch is the preparation. And the preparation for an entrepreneur, let's say you're pitching to a venture capital firm. So you have better know who's in that room, where they came from, what school did they go to, what are their interests, what are they invested in, what boards are they on, everything like that. You're looking for hooks that, Oh, we both went to Stanford. We both like to surf. You're on the board of Copper, and I love Copper as my CRM solution. You're looking for hooks to differentiate yourself from the other dumbasses that came in at 8, 9, 10, 1, 2, and 3. You're the four o'clock appointment, right? So everybody said, We have patent-pending Curve Jumping paradigm shifting way to dent the universe. We're going to provide you with unbelievable shareholder returns while enabling our employees to self-actualize their life goals or exceeding the expectations of our customers. Every entrepreneur says that. Nobody says, I'm a dumb who's lazy, okay? So you have to find hooks. And the hooks are LinkedIn is God's gift to pitching, basically. If you don't study LinkedIn before a pitch, something is wrong with you.

You're an idiot. It looks like have a sign on your head that says, I am clueless. So that's the preparation. I think initial concept is you can never be too brief. I've never sat in a presentation or a pitch and said, This was too short. It was too succinct. Something is I have never, ever said that. And I've said it thousands of pitches. So there's the guy Kawasaki 10, 20 or 30 rule, which is 10 slides in 20 minutes, 30 point font minimum. So that's a good foundation or framework. The other metaphor that I would love for entrepreneurs to understand is to think of yourself as an airplane or a pilot in an airplane. And at two ends of the spectrum in airplanes, there is the 787 Airbus A380 at one end, and at the other end, there's the F-15, there's the F-18, whatever. And so the A380 and the 787 They have two miles of runway, and they go rumbling down. And then at the end of two miles, they take off, and everybody says, How the hell can half a million pounds ever exceed? But anyway, it's a miracle that those planes take off.

At the other end, you're on an aircraft carrier. You get in this plane, you have 150 meters to get off the flight deck, or you fall in the water and you die. And I think most entrepreneurs think they are piloting a 787. So they come into this pitch and they say, Well, let me tell you my life story. My great grandfather came over on the Mayflower, and he landed in New Cana connected. And then he started a horse shoe business. And he went like... And then, okay, finally. So then they made it rich. So they endowed a fellowship at Yale. And I got to Yale. And then that first summer, I worked at Goldman Sachs. And then I got an at Harvard MBA, and I started at HP in the internship program. And then I took Windows classes, and finally, I decided to start a company. That's the Airbus A380. The F-18 pilot has got to get off the deck, and you should be an F-18 pilot. So in the first 30 seconds, everybody in that room should understand what you do. I have sat in so many pitches where they're talking about their whole family heritage, their education, their strategy, the size of the internet.

The internet is going to be big. You know that, right? So let me explain how big the internet will be. And this is right now. And so there are this Airbus A380 trying to get down this two-mile runway. And I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, is this hardware? Is this software? Is this e-commerce? Is this social networking? Is this AI? What the hell do they do? And so I think the most important lessons are be brief, prepare, and get Get your ass off the tarmac as fast as you can. Thirty seconds into it, they should understand, this is a software company. This is a cloud-based software company. What does Canva do? It democratizes design so you don't need Photoshop. There, I said it. Five seconds.

I love that. And practice, right? I'll hop on discovery calls. I know they can't afford my services, and I'll just do it to practice, right? Practice your pitch.

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How about who we should pitch to? There's the right people and the wrong people, and some of them are really uphill battles, so I'd love to hear that.

Well, you may not agree with this piece of advice, but I think that when you're starting out, you should pitch to anybody who'll listen. I don't think you can be proud. Now, of course, we'd all like to pitch to John Dore or the general partner, the big cheese at Sequoia or Kleiner Perkins or whoever. We'd love to pitch to Elon Musk. We'd love to pitch to Tim Cook, et cetera, et cetera. But I'm telling you, when you start off, you should just pitch to anybody who'll listen. And it's for the reason that you mentioned that, yeah, you may be starting with a summer intern who's not going to make a decision to write you a check for five million bucks, but 20 summer interns later, you will be meeting with a partner. At that point, it's too late. You need to have had 25 rejections and 25 practice sessions to be ready for this great meeting. And you have to pay the price.

Yeah. So what about more generally, though? When it comes to evangelism and trying to market a product, you don't want to market a product to people who just don't believe in it. You want to go agnostic. I want to hear those lessons from you.

So I would say that, here we go with some conflicting advice. On the one hand, I would say that you should pitch even a product to anybody who will listen. It's good practice, and you may never know. You may think that this person is not qualified, but this is a summer intern or secretary, administrative aid, customer service manager, whatever. No, not the decision maker. But guess what? The decision maker is listening to this person because this person really does the work. Or this person you're pitching to spouse is a decision maker at another company. You just never know. So I'm really into indiscriminate pitches. I think it's also humbling that you should not think that you are so freaking important that unless you are talking to the CXO, this company is not worthy of your time. Frankly, you're bullshit. You're full of shit. Anyway, so that's one thing. Now, on the other hand, as you say, you could be wasting a lot of time doing what I'm saying. And I freely admit that. But I would say that, yes, go for it. Go do your qualification education and figure out who the decision maker, et cetera, et cetera is.

Yes. And again, LinkedIn is your greatest weapon in this. But if you said, okay, guy, should you pitch too much or too little? Should you evangelize too much or too little? I would say too much. Air on the side of doing too much. And this is completely in the face of the concept of select a few targets, know them well, get just the most highly qualified, specific. Use a rifle. I'm telling you, use a shotgun.

Yeah. I mean, this goes back to a lot of the things that we've been touting today, expanding your luck, showing up, getting practice, preparing, right? It's just all those things combined because you never know who you pitch to, what that will end up being or who will end up being in 20 years even.

Okay. I'll tell you a great story that you as a podcaster will truly appreciate. Sure. So do you know who Angela Duckworth is? Yes. Macarthur Award winner. Grit, right? Yes. Okay. Big deal. Maybe she's your client.

Not my client, but probably will be on my podcast soon.

Okay. So who among us has a podcast who would not want to have Angela Duckworth?

Nobody.

Nobody. Nobody in their right mind. Maybe Joe Rogan would have wanted. But anyway, so I want Angela Duckworth, right? So I don't know her. So I send an email to whatever, info@angeladuckworth. Com. No response. Weeks go by, and I default to yes. I I really didn't know exactly what I was getting into today, but I default to yes. Now, if you think that I did all the research and you had Marshall Goldsmith and how many followers are, you're the most influential person on LinkedIn and all. And that's why I said, yes, you can believe that. God bless you. But that's not the truth. The truth is I default to yes. So I default to yes. And one day I'm on this podcast as a guest, and the person starts off by saying, Yeah, so hi, my name is whatever, Trixie Smith. And I live in Mobile, Alabama, and I am a freshman in high school. Oh, boy. And so we're going to talk about whatever, innovation, right? And I was sitting there saying, God, you are such a dumb ass. Why did you accept to waste an hour of your life on a podcast with a 14-year old person from Alabama?

Not that I have anything against Alabama, but you know. And she probably has five subscribers to her podcast, Mom and dad, aunt, uncle, and Younger Brother, okay? But lo and behold, man, she asked great questions. And then at the end of this podcast, I say to her, Who else have you had on your podcast? Because I'm thinking, Who else was dumb enough to say this? And she said, Oh, two weeks ago, I had Angela Duckworth. And my freaking jaw is on the ground. I said, You had Angela Duckworth? How did you get Angela Duckworth? She goes, Well, Angela Duckworth really likes to help young women succeed. So I, as a young woman, reached out to her and she said, Yes. I said, Okay. I said, So how about this? Will you ask Angela Duckworth to be on my podcast? She says, Yes. So she, 14-year-old girl in, like I said, Mobile, Alabama, with Over the Moon podcast, she writes to Angela Duckworth, CC's me, and lo and behold, Angela Duckworth answers, and one thing leads to another, and I get Angela Duckworth on my podcast.

Amazing.

So people might think, oh, guy, everybody knows who you are. You're a big deal, blah, blah, blah. So that's how you... Even Angela Duckworth would be thrilled to be on your podcast. She's probably just checking info@angeladuckworth. Com every half an hour, looking for that invite. But the truth is, it was a 14-year-old podcaster from Mobile, Alabama, with five subscribers who got me Angela Duckworth. Every entrepreneur should listen to that story and say, Huh? What's the point? Point is, you never know. You never know. For all you know, her grandfather is Warren Buffet. Who knows, right?

Exactly. Well, that's cool. I want to find out her name and help her.

I can't remember.

Now I want to be Angela Duckworth and help this girl.

That's right.

All right. So let's talk about enchantment before we go. I know we're wrapping up on time here, but I love this concept of likeability, first impressions, and making people like you more. So I'd love to hear your best advice and guidance when it comes to being more enchanting.

Okay. So enchantment, I has several pillars. One is likeability, because it's hard to be enchanted by someone you don't like. Let's face it, right? So there's likability. There's also competence that it's hard to like people who are incompetent bozos. That's the second leg. And the third thing is trustworthiness, because you could like somebody. You could like some TikTok influencer. That doesn't mean you trust that TikTok influencer. You could like Paris Hilton. That doesn't mean you trust Paris built it. So likeability, trustworthy, and competence. Those are the three pillars of enchantment. And so this book Enchantment is about how to increase all three of those things. As far as likeability, I think a lot of it is just, well, this was written before the pandemic, right? So I think a lot of likeability is, what is your handshake like? Is it like wimpy or are you trying to crush the person's hand or is it in the middle? What is your smile like? Is it a grit your teeth, hold the pencil in your teeth smile, or is it a legitimate happy Duchen smile? Are you showing crow's feet? You're too young to have crow's feet, Holla.

But are you showing your crow's feet or not? Because crow's feet is a very good indication of sincerity and smiling. So it's those kinds of things. And a third thing in likability is, are you accepting people for what they are, or are you trying to change them? And so I think people can pick up when you can sense that this person thinks that I should be a Democrat, or I should be a Republican, or I should be something that I'm not. It's hard to like people who don't accept you for what you are.

And I know that you say you also should be aligned to a good cause.

Yes.

And I thought this was really interesting because you wrote the book in 2011. And in the last year, I feel like every other conversation I have is like, conscious business, conscious leadership. Everybody wants to talk about aligning purpose with a good cause. And it seems more recent because I've been doing this for four or five years, and now everyone's talking about that. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on why you think we should align ourselves to a good cause. And you've obviously thought this for a long time.

Well, just to be clear, I'm not saying you should align yourself with a good cause because it's good marketing and good financial returns and good all. And although those may be true, don't get me wrong.

Biproducts, yeah.

Yeah, it is a byproduct. And I just believe that there is a Carmen karmic scoreboard in the sky. And this karmic scoreboard is tallying what you do with your life. And if you jack people around and screw them and you trash the Earth and all that, it's being counted someplace. Now, you could say, guy, you're so full of shit. Do you have any scientific proof of this karmic scoreboard? Not at all. You can't prove God either. But I digress. But I'm just saying with something like this, why take a chance? Why take a chance? I mean, you're only We're talking about your life, your reputation, and who knows, maybe your afterlife. So do you want to be stuck in a 737 in a center seating the smoking section, or you want to be in Singapore Airlines or Emirates Airbus A380? It's up to you. So I just think it's good karma.

Yeah. I love your default. Yes. I'm the same way. I just say yes. If you can help somebody, if you have the time, why not?

Even if you don't have the time.

Yeah. Well, this has been such a great conversation, Guy. I always end my interviews with the same couple of questions, and then we do some fun stuff at the end of the year. So the first one is, what is a piece of actionable advice that my young in profitors can do today to become more profiting tomorrow?

You can learn how to truly empathize. That is, this goes beyond market research. So market research is basically go and see. Go see how people live, go whatever. I would say if If you want to do it even better, you go and be, which means you go and be the person. Let's say you're doing a study of customer service, so you could go to the customer service center and you could see what happens on the call lines, or you could actually put the headset on and be the customer service person, or you could actually call into your company's customer service and be the customer. Empathy is a great skill, and it just open your eyes to so many things.

Oh, my gosh. I love that advice. And what is your secret to profiting in life? And this doesn't have to be monetary. Profiting is whatever you believe it is.

Listen to your wife. How's that?

Why?

Because women are smarter than men. I truly do believe that. If you look at this world right now, men have screwed this world up from top to bottom for centuries. I think we should let women run the world.

I mean, what a better We're the first place to stop the interview right then and there. And where can our listeners go to learn more about you and everything that you do?

Well, if you truly want to see my best work, go to remarkablepeople. Com. Just a word of caution here. Remarkable people is not guy spouting off about how to be remarkable. Remarkable people is guy, kidding. People like Jane Goodall and Steve Wozniak and Neil deGrasse Tyson and Ariana Huffington and Christie Yamaguchi. And I could just go on Angela Duckworth on on and on. I'm trying to get the wisdom from them into you. That's what I'm doing on Remarkable People.

I love it. Well, if you guys like my podcast, I think you're going to love guys. So make sure you check it out. We'll stick all of his links in the show notes. And thank you so much for this amazing conversation.

My pleasure. And maybe I should have you on the podcast. I would love to be on the podcast.

They call me the podcast Princess. I built a media empire. I have 60 employees, started it as a side hustle. I'd love to be on your podcast.

I know you're the podcast queen. Forget the Princess.

Thank you.

I'm not saying you're old. No, I know.

I feel like I want the princess for a few years, and then I'll graduate to queen.

Okay.

All righty. All the best to you. Take care.

Thanks, guy. Bye-bye.